Good morning.

A windy day with a high temperature of sixty-one awaits Whitewater.

Ninety-nine years ago,

On the night of October 14, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was shot in Milwaukee. Roosevelt was in Wisconsin stumping as the presidential candidate of the new, independent Progressive Party, which had split from the Republican Party earlier that year. Roosevelt already had served two terms as chief executive (1901-1909), but was seeking the office again as the champion of progressive reform. Unbeknownst to Roosevelt, a New York bartender named John Schrank had been stalking him for three weeks through eight states. As Roosevelt left Milwaukee’s Hotel Gilpatrick for a speaking engagement at the Milwaukee Auditorium and stood waving to the gathered crowd, Schrank fired a .38-caliber revolver that he had hidden in his coat.

Roosevelt was hit in the right side of the chest and the bullet lodged in his chest wall. Seeing the blood on his shirt, vest, and coat, his aides pleaded with him to seek medical help, but Roosevelt trivialized the wound and insisted on keeping his commitment. His life was probably saved by the speech, since the contents of his coat pocket — his metal spectacle case and the thick, folded manuscript of his talk — had absorbed much of the force of the bullet. Throughout the evening he made light of the wound, declaring at one point, “It takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose,” but the candidate spend the next week in the hospital and carried the bullet inside him the rest of his life.

Schrank, the would-be assassin, was examined by psychiatrists, who recommended that he be committed to an asylum. A judge concurred and Schrank spent the remainder of his life incarcerated, first at the Northern Hospital for the Insane in Oshkosh, then at Central State Hospital for the criminally insane at the state prison at Waupun. The glass Roosevelt drank from on stage that night was acquired by the Wisconsin Historical Museum. You can read more about the assassination attempt on their Museum Object of Week pages.

Source: Wisconsin Historical Society.

Good morning.

It’s a rainy day in store for Whitewater, with thunderstorms and a high temperature of sixty-three.

Today’s a better day than yesterday: we’re closer to free trade with friendly countries than we were before.  Bloomberg reports the good news:

The U.S. Congress approved free- trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, bringing an end to years of stalemate and offering what supporters said was the biggest opportunity for exporters in decades.

The bills go to President Barack Obama, who spent two years seeking to broaden Democratic support for pacts revised from initial agreements reached by his predecessor. The South Korea deal, the biggest for the U.S. since the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, removes duties on almost two-thirds of American farm exports, and phases out tariffs on more than 95 percent of industrial and consumer exports within five years.

See, Biggest U.S. Free-Trade Accord Since ’94 Passed – Bloomberg.

From Africa, there’s a happy story about the rescue of a poached baby gorilla:

As part of an undercover operation, five rangers from DRC’s Virunga National Park posed as buyers after receiving a tip that a baby gorilla was for sale.

The park’s spokeswoman LuAnne Cadd told MSNBCthe culprits could be linked to zoos in India and Russia, along with independent private owners looking for pet baby gorillas.

With only 786 mountain gorillas left on Earth due to poaching, hunting and disease, rangers and park officials fear there could be more they aren’t saving.

Good morning.

It’s a rainy day here in Whitewater, with a high temperature of seventy-four. It’s also likely the last seventy-degree day this month. More seasonable temperatures return tomorrow. October will again be…October.

There’s a meeting of Whitewater’s Tech Park Board today, with an agenda available online. Agenda item 10, in closed session, includes consideration of “Potential Building and Conference Room Naming Rights.” Oh, brother: there’s someone who’d pay to have his name associated with this project? That’s too funny.

I’m all in favor: get as much as you can for these rights, and then use the money to start paying back the taxpayers and residents who spent millions in grant money and municipal debt to give CESA 2 a much nicer building.

It won’t be easy, though: most people want to place their names on libraries, schools, and hospitals, but they tend to avoid naming rights for flop houses, clip joints, and speakeasies.

There’s better news elsewhere. A Google doodle – the art that sometimes appears in the place of the search engine’s ordinary logo — today celebrates what would have been Gumby creator Art Clokey‘s birthday. Very sweet.

Good morning.

It’s a seventy-seven degree day for Whitewater today, with a chance of afternoon showers.

We often hear stories about collisions between deer and cars, and sometimes deer and motorcycles.  South Africans have other problems —

Via Evan Van Der Spuy, South African Cyclist, Hit By Antelope While Mountain Biking (VIDEO).